


The Heart and Soul Nebulae

by autumnalbee (redherring)



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Astronomy Professor!Victor, Chemistry Professor!Sherlock, Heartmarks, M/M, Pining, Professor AU, Soulmates AU, Unrequited Love, mentions of Reichenbach, science puns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-25
Updated: 2015-08-25
Packaged: 2018-04-13 16:08:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4528491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redherring/pseuds/autumnalbee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Victor’s always heard that the first time you kiss your soulmate, you just <i>know</i>. It’s fireworks and a tingling under your heartmark and an overwhelming amount of emotion you can’t quite capture in words, as vast as the universe and as heart-achingly powerful as a collapsing supernova.</p><p>He feels all of it and more when he leans in and kisses Sherlock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Heart and Soul Nebulae

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lesnuffles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesnuffles/gifts).



> This is a birthday gift for AlexisRFree. :) They asked for a soulmates AU in which Sherlock and Victor are together, but aren't soulmates. I know the summary is misleading, but have no fear! I'm going off their headcanon for the most part here, though I've added my own, as they asked for extra angst. 
> 
> I decided on a uni professor AU as I've wanted to write Victor as an astronomy professor for THE LONGEST TIME. I've based things off the American collegiate system as that's what I'm familiar with; I don't know much about English unis, unfortunately.

The science department lounge is always busy at noon. Victor knows this, and because of his schedule, he always tries to get there around one-fifteen. The slow eaters are gone by then, and he has his pick of the newspapers, though most of the good coffee has usually already been consumed. Eating in his office seems like a sad fate, but after a morning of lectures, he isn’t sure he wants to be around even more people.  
  
Lunch in hand, he walks to the lounge and pushes the door open.  
  
It is almost entirely silver save for the appliances—coffee maker, tea kettle, microwave, refrigerator. And, on this occasion, a man, sitting in Victor’s usual chair.  
  
Victor hasn’t met him before. Curly black hair; a bit wild, but nothing one wouldn’t expect from someone in the science department. Black clothes. Nice coat. _Strikingly beautiful_ eyes—  
  
“You’re staring,” the man says, and Victor nearly drops his lunch sack.  
  
“Right, sorry,” he manages. The man doesn’t reply, so Victor takes his lunch to the microwave and pops in the leftovers from last night’s soup. He can’t see the man but in his peripheral vision, and it isn’t until the microwave dings and he pulls his soup out that he notices the man has moved a seat over. He smiles a bit to himself and takes his usual seat.  
  
The man looks down at his soup, then up at him as Victor blows on a spoonful of chicken noodle and slurps.  
  
“I suppose you’ve been discussing the eclipse with your classes today.”  
  
Victor looks up. The man’s smiling at him.

* * *

The very next day, Sherlock is in the lounge again when Victor arrives.  
  
“Am I not annoying enough to keep you away yet?” Victor asks, sitting next to him.  
  
“Not yet, no.” Sherlock looks up from his mobile, seemingly surprised. “Should I have run for the hills upon meeting you? Most people do when they meet me for the first time.”  
  
Victor frowns. “You’re not as bad as all that. Even if you do like mayonnaise on your sandwiches.”  
  
Sherlock laughs.

* * *

“Are you honestly telling me you’ve never been stargazing?”  
  
Sherlock shakes his head, a somewhat confused look on his face. Victor likes that look; the space between his eyebrows get wrinkly and his eyes dart around, as though the answer to Victor’s madness lay somewhere in the room.  
  
“That’s it.” Victor folds up the newspaper, then tosses it across the table. “You. Me. Peckwater Quad. Seven.”  
  
Sherlock’s face goes completely blank.  
  
Victor has never seen his face look like that, not for the seven months they’d run into each other in the faculty lounge. He’s almost about to say something when Sherlock clears his throat.  
  
“Yes. Okay.”  
  
“Perfect. Don’t worry about bringing anything, I’ll handle all of it.”  
  
“I’d hope you would. I don’t have a telescope in my closet, I’m afraid.”  
  
“You don’t need a telescope for stargazing. You just need space to look up at the stars.” Victor smirks. “And anyway, I’m always looking  at a star when I look at you.”  
  
Sherlock groans, covering his face with his hand as Victor laughs away. “You’re terrible. Absolutely terrible.”  
  
Something tingles on Victor’s wrist. He ignores it. “You shine like a star!”  
  
“Are we reading off encouragement stickers for students now?”  
  
Victor leans in closer, resting his elbow on the table and giving Sherlock the cheesiest look he can manage, one eyebrow cocked. “You can’t deny the _chemistry_ between us.”  
  
Sherlock leans back in his chair, letting his head loll backward and his arms dangle. “You are killing me slowly. Please, just finish the job.”  
  
“Okay, okay, listen to this one.” Victor straightens up in his chair, clearing his throat. “I got it from a cat on the Internet.”  
  
“Oh, god.”  
  
“Ask me if I have any sodium hypobromate.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Just do it.” Victor scratches his wrist.  
  
“Hmph. Do you have any sodium hypobromate?”  
  
“NaBrO!”  
  
Sherlock throws his head forward, hitting it on the desk with a loud slam! “You’ve killed me. I’ve died of embarrassment.”  
  
Victor pats his head, still cackling at his own joke. “You have to admit, that was the best one.”  
  
“It was not,” Sherlock grumbles. “You’re a terrible, terrible man, and you have a class to teach in five minutes.”  
  
Blinking, Victor turns to look at the clock. Sherlock isn’t wrong. He gathers up his things. “Remember, seven tonight at Peckwater.”  
  
Sherlock makes a noncommittal grunting noise and waves Victor away. “Go torture your students with those puns instead of me.”  
  
Victor winks at him, a stack of notes in his arms as he uses his back to open the door. His wrist is itching more now than it had before, and he considers making a run to his office to see if he can find some itch cream when he pulls up his sleeve.  
  
His heart mark is bright pink.

* * *

According to NASA, the Heart nebula, also known as emission nebula IC 1805, spans over 200 light-years in the Perseus arm of the Milky Way. The glowing dust has an intense reddish-pink hue, and its shape resembles a heart turned onto its side. It contains a small cluster of stars that are nearly 50 times the mass of the Sun.  
  
The Heart nebula is located in the constellation Cassiopeia.

* * *

“That’s Orion over there,” Victor says. “See his belt?”  
  
“That doesn’t look like a person,” Sherlock snorts.  
  
Victor turns his head to the side to look at him. “What does it look like to you?”  
  
Sherlock squints, then shrugs, lacing his fingers together on his stomach. “Stars.”  
  
“Well, you’re not wrong. That’s Rigel right there, his ankle. Betelgeuse is his right shoulder, and Bellatrix is the left.”  
  
“Is this really what you do for fun?” Sherlock asks, smirking as he looks at Victor.  
  
Victor raises an eyebrow. “It’s more relaxing than solving chemical equations.”  
  
“I think that’s debatable.” Sherlock looks at him for a long time. A really long time. So long, in fact, that Victor is struck with how breathtakingly gorgeous Sherlock is, from his frankly terrible hair to his shiny black shoes. He wants to kiss him so desperately, to see how wonderful those lips would feel against his own, to know how his hair would tangle around a set of fingers.  
  
Victor’s always heard that the first time you kiss your soulmate, you just _know_. It’s fireworks and a tingling under your heart mark and an overwhelming amount of emotion you can’t quite capture in words, as vast as the universe and as heart-achingly powerful as a collapsing supernova.  
  
He feels all of it and more when he leans in and kisses Sherlock.

* * *

Sherlock publishes an essay in a science journal. He does not tell Victor that he’s been working on it, nor that it has been published. Victor finds out in the department email that everyone else receives.  
  
He goes to the reception dinner, dressed in his best suit, one Sherlock had commented on earlier as “going with his hair.” After half an hour of waiting, Victor finds that Sherlock is finally alone, and he walks over to talk to him when someone else swoops in, pulling Sherlock away before Victor was even close. Though Sherlock looks disgusted, he tosses Victor an apologetic smile, and that is enough.  
  
Sherlock is not alone again for the rest of the night.

* * *

The next day, Victor sits next to Sherlock in the lounge as he always did, offering to tell him good puns like the old times. Sherlock never shows any signs that he’s heard Victor at all.

Sherlock rolls up his sleeves at one point, and Victor cranes his neck to see his heart mark, to see if it's as pink as his own.

He doesn't see one at all.

After a week, Sherlock has apparently changed his lunch break, because Victor doesn’t see him anymore except in department meetings, and even then it’s from across a room filled with too many people.  
  
Victor’s heart mark stays pink, and the skin chafes against his sleeve. He starts wearing jumpers instead of linen shirts.

* * *

Westerhout 5, IC 1848, or the Soul nebula, is also located in Cassiopeia. While it has the same red colors as IC 1805, blues and greens are also prominent shades. It sprawls over 7,500 light-years, and can be found to the northeast of the Heart nebula. Its shape is an oblong oval caved in on one side.

* * *

Sherlock is talking to other people.  
  
Victor knows it’s stupid to be jealous when there was nothing between them to begin with. He knows he should be glad for Sherlock, glad that he’s branching out, talking to people instead of hiding in his office like he was wont to do.  
  
He’s jealous anyway.  
  
When Sherlock’s discussing what is undoubtedly some important chemistry talk with one of his colleagues, Victor walks over to them, smiling a bit. He’s able to understand part of the conversation, and when he opens his mouth to speak, Sherlock looks at him for the first time since he walked over, a puzzled expression on his face.  
  
“Don’t you have somewhere to be, Victor?” he asks, and though the question seems genuine, Victor can’t help but take it to heart.  
  
“I… suppose I do, yes,” he lies, and Sherlock’s eyes linger for only a moment before Victor’s forgotten again.

* * *

When Victor sleeps, he doesn’t dream. No nightmares, no pleasant but strange imaginings, nothing.  
  
To make up for it, he starts writing.  
  
He buys a Moleskine from WHSmith and orders a fountain pen online, as well as a matching ink. He is disappointed when the ink bleeds through the Moleskine pages on the first word, but he finds another journal, and the pen glides across the paper. He buys more inks in every color, then every shade. He fills up one notebook and starts on another.  
  
After two months, he has three full journals, five fountain pens, and twenty-seven bottles of ink. He sends the contents of the notebooks to an editor, who publishes it as a short science fiction novel entitled, “Defects.” He wins awards for best debut novel and best up-and-coming author, and his book is at the top of an online best-sellers list for three weeks straight.  
  
He thinks about what Sherlock will say to him. Will it be a thinly-veiled compliment? Or will he just smile at him and make a joke? No, not a joke—but he’ll say something. He has to.  
  
Victor’s colleagues congratulate him at the reception, making jokes about scientists dabbling in the liberal arts. He takes the compliments at face-value.  
  
He does not get any sort of acknowledgment from Sherlock, and he does not let on how much that breaks him.

* * *

Despite their proximity, the Heart and Soul nebulae will never collide prior to the end of the universe. They are being pulled in opposite directions by nebulae of larger mass. It is more likely that they will eventually merge into the larger nebulae instead.

* * *

Sherlock does not tell him when he decides to move to another university. Victor hears about it through the department email, which wishes him well and good luck at his new university. There is no going-away party, and though he looks for him, Victor does not run into Sherlock to say goodbye.  
  
Sherlock would have been only a few years away from tenure.

* * *

Victor finds himself crying in his office over a student paper.  
  
There is nothing remarkable about the paper. It is handwritten, which is a surprise, with a Pilot flexible fountain pen and J. Hardin blue-black ink that he discovers is not water-resistant. He knows the student is trying to suck up. He doesn’t care.  
  
His computer is on, the web browser currently on a page that displays his university email inbox. He only ever checks it once a day, as an excuse to have a bit of a break from grading student work. This time, it is open on a particular email. The sender is scidepart@cu.org.uk, and the subject line is “Notification of Former Colleague’s Death.”  
  
When Victor looks down at his wrist, his heart mark is purple and bruised, an angry, raised spot against his skin. He feels an immense amount of fury, of hatred. He wants that fucking heart mark off his skin, to forget about Sherlock forever and to never feel anything ever again. He shoves papers off his desk, knocking over bottles of ink in the process. The glass breaks against the hard floor, and ink seeps across the tiles.


End file.
